Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

After a period of downturn, China's film market has ushered in a recovery during the Spring Festival in 2023.

At present, a total of seven films are scheduled for the Spring Festival in 2023. They are "wandering the Earth 2", "Man Jiang Hong", "the Deep Sea", "nameless", "Exchange of Life", "Chinese ping-pong Jedi counterattack" and "Bear Heart". These works can be said to be "immortal fight", so that many audiences suffer from "choice difficulty".

According to the Cat's Eye Professional Edition, the new Spring Festival film in 2023 grossed 1.349 billion on its first day of release, with a total of 446000 screenings and 25.337 million moviegoers. As of January 26, the total box office (including pre-sale) of the Spring Festival in 2023 exceeded 5 billion. The pre-sale of the 2023 Spring Festival is worth more than 100 million yuan in two days, and based on the fact that the box office in the first five days is the highest in nearly five years, some institutions predict that the overall box office of the Spring Festival is expected to exceed 9 billion.

Among them, "Man Jiang Hong", "wandering Earth 2" and "Bear haunting me" stood out among the competitors, ranking among the top three at the box office during the Spring Festival. The success of the three works not only reflects their own excellent "quality", but also represents the three strategies of excellent players during the Spring Festival.

"Manjianghong" focuses on gorgeous lineup and comedy elements; "wandering Earth 2" focuses on special effects content and technical strength; and "Bear haunts" this sub-work also uses excellent results to deduce the classic IP how to make progress in stability.

Slow down the editorial department to take an inventory of several outstanding contestants during the Spring Festival this year, and present you with a guide to the breakthrough of popular movies during the Spring Festival. There is no spoiler in the whole process of this article, only extract the iconic features to be analyzed, please rest assured to watch.

"Manjianghong"-the "innovative fusion" of Chinese aesthetics, national righteousness and suspense comedy is obviously the biggest dark horse in the Spring Festival in 2023, directed by Zhang Yimou. Four days after its release, the box office exceeded 1.7 billion, accounting for 40% of the Spring Festival, which is half of the country.

As a good student in the Spring Festival, Man Jianghong firmly grasps the secret of breaking out from a large number of people: a gorgeous lineup, light comedy and strong publicity, making it a popular work in the Spring Festival.

In terms of lineup, Shen Teng and Yi Yi Qianxi are the two leading actors, starring Zhang Yue, Lei Jiayin and Yue Yunpeng. There are not only cutting-edge actors with their own flow, but also the old faces of professional comedies, while the rest of the stars are also strength players. Coupled with the veteran director Zhang Yimou, the lineup of "Man Jianghong" can be said to be the No.1 of the Spring Festival.

▲ Photo Source: according to the label, the poster of "Manjianghong" has eight words at the top, "suspense enough, laugh to the last", coupled with the title of "Manjianghong", it is destined to be a film that combines comedy, suspense, history and national feelings. And how to integrate is the core issue of this film.

Against the background of a meeting between the Southern Song Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty, Manjianghong tells the loyalty story of a group of righteous men who gave up their lives to shovel evil. Many viewers said after watching the movie, "it's like a big screenplay." Among them, the roles played by Shen Teng and Sun Jun, played by Zhang Da and Yi Qianxi, are also mysterious and infinitely imaginative. Like the previous "famous Liwan", the integration of the historical background and the "Blizzard Villa" model has laid the foundation for the suspense color of "Manjianghong".

With the suspense, the comedy color on the other side of the film is essential if you want to catch the audience during the Spring Festival. Zhang Yimou said frankly that it is very difficult to challenge Comedy + suspense. "the greatest happiness that reversal brings to everyone is not to reverse itself, but to rely on reasonable stories and characters." when this' strength 'comes, the chemical reaction comes out. "

Director Zhang chose to reverse the comedy elements of the film, such as the "decent face" of Lei Jiayin to play the traitor Qin Hui. The "reversal" is reflected not only in visible places such as casting, but also in the narrative system of the film: big people are busy with their own self-interest all day, while small potatoes are making big plans. Nobody can be righteous, but those with high positions of power are narrow-minded. "Manjianghong" is the use of this contrast, so that satire and humor throughout the film, to achieve an advanced comedy effect.

In terms of detail carving, the quality of "Man Jianghong" is also excellent. Most of the stories in the film take place in a courtyard, with a seemingly single scene, with the help of miraculous details to create a sense of spatial beauty that belongs to Chinese architecture, hiding a large amount of details into a seemingly simple scene.

Actors walk back and forth in the aisle, this is the lantern of China. Director Zhang Yimou created the Chinese aesthetics of "Manjianghong" with his own understanding: "the beauty of its architecture, its tiles and various details carved on the walls show a sense of beauty of Chinese architecture and a sense of beauty of its space." hundreds of people really built this courtyard, polished very well, and those details were shown very well. "

In terms of publicity and distribution, Manjianghong's commercial resources are also full of energy. It got 26% of the screenings on the first day of release, and has been occupying more than 30% of the shows since then. In order to present better aesthetic details and audio-visual effects, Manjianghong also creatively adopted iMAX shooting for the first time in similar films, and achieved a good production rate in the giant screen hall. In Weibo, Douyin and other platforms, the topic of "Manjianghong" also firmly occupies the top five positions.

Like high achiever in the class, Man Jianghong is an unbiased hexagonal warrior. not only the film itself is of excellent quality, but its comedy elements and story themes also meet the market needs of the Spring Festival. The lineup and Xuan played a set of excellent combination punches. It is hard to say whether Manjianghong is an excellent film, but it is definitely the most capable work in the Spring Festival archives.

"wandering Earth 2"-a new milestone in Chinese science fiction and domestic special effects. The most anticipated player in this year's Spring Festival is "wandering Earth 2" directed by Guo Fan. This masterpiece, which has been sharpened in four years, has grossed more than 1.5 billion yuan within four days of its release, making it the box office champion on the opening day of science-fiction films in mainland film history.

The movie "wandering Earth 2" has won a high reputation from many audiences since its release. At present, the movie Douban score is 8.3, Taobao ticket score is 9.7, Cat's Eye score is 9.4, Sina V recommendation is 97%, and bilibili's rating is 9.8, making it the first word of mouth in the Spring Festival. In addition, the movie "wandering the Earth 2" was also released in North America, New Zealand, Singapore, Australia and other countries and regions, and won 75% reviews, 89% popcorn popularity and an IMDb score of 8.2 on the famous US "rotten tomato" movie website.

▲ Photo Source: wandering Earth 2 if wandering Earth "opens the door to Chinese sci-fi films", then wandering Earth 2 has brought domestic sci-fi films to a broad road with its acclaimed and popular achievements. As one of the few major productions in the Spring Festival, wandering Earth 2 chooses to use an excellent world outlook and narrative level, coupled with the top visual effects in the industry, to create a traditional "blockbuster" against the trend.

Like Avatar 1 and Interstellar, a successful sci-fi film cannot be made without a complete and logically consistent background and setting. The core attraction of wandering Earth 2 is the huge world outlook constructed by the creators. This requires constant curiosity and bold imagination, and the slight polishing of the world outlook and cosmology will bring shocking effect in the movie plot.

Although the wandering Earth series has the advantages of Liu Cixin's original works, it needs a great deal of detail to expand the short novel into a screenplay for shooting. It is obvious from the film that in wandering Earth 2, the creators have a more profound exploration than the first one. Director Guo Fan has revealed that the light background setting of the wandering Earth series is as long as 200000 words, and every technical detail is controlled by professionals and even a team of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Because of this, to nuclear explosions of the moon, space elevators and other "big things", as small as overhead fighters, computer screens, "wandering Earth 2" gives us a real sense of the future, as if the scene in the film will really happen in 30 years' time. The interface of many sci-fi movies is late P, but in wandering Earth 2, in pursuit of authenticity and better picture texture, the crew directly set up a UI department to actually do UI for each screen.

In addition to the large-scale production of the background and details of the story, wandering Earth 2 is also the only investment in scenes and special effects. The whole film involves 5310 conceptual drawings and 95000 props. The crew set up many studios in Qingdao, with a total area of 1 million square meters. Most of the sci-fi scenes and props in the film are not special effects, but real scenes and realistic models to shoot.

For example, in the famous scene "Space Elevator", the crew actually built a car in the shed. In order to simulate the vibration of the elevator when it took off, there were many large springs and vibrators under the shed. Many robots in the film are actually designed and manufactured by the crew. For example, the "door frame robot" and the robot dog "clumsy", each with its own serial number, LED screen, motor bearing, cable, etc. And it's a real movable model.

At the level of special effects production, most of the more than 3000 special effects shots of wandering Earth 2 are produced by Chinese teams. With a cost of 1000 yuan per second, it not only shows the same effect as Hollywood, but also contributes a unique industrial process to the production of domestic special effects. With a production cost of up to 800 million yuan, the film is full of spectacle, and there is no urine spot for nearly 3 hours.

Whether it is the diplomatic drama at the United Nations venue, the thinking about the virtual world and artificial intelligence in the storyline, or the idea of collectivism to overcome the difficulties under natural disasters, they are all shocking beyond the special effects. If the scenes and special effects only reflect the hard power of the film, then the Chinese values shown in the film and the thinking about technology and the future reflect the excellent soft power of wandering Earth 2.

With its dense scenes and excellent stories, wandering Earth 2 has brought the audience a rich table full of Han people. although the taste may not be to some people's taste, the quality has become a milestone in Chinese films. Let the small audience sci-fi film "kill" the Spring Festival, is the best embodiment of the quality of "wandering the Earth 2".

"Bear haunting"-"more than just for" when many people speculated about the winner of the third runner-up during the Spring Festival, Bear haunted me and Bear Xin came forward unexpectedly. Not only beat the high-scoring animation work "Deep Sea", but also easily beat live-action films such as "nameless" and "Exchange of Life".

Affection has always been a major theme in the film market, especially in the special period of the Spring Festival. In 2021, "Hello, Li Huanying", which focuses on family affection, became the champion of the category with a box office of 5.413 billion yuan, opening up a new road for genre films. "Bear appears and accompanies me" Bear Core "presents the return of" Mama Bear "in the form of science fiction, and combines a large number of comedy elements of family fun, which is naturally suitable for the tonality of the Spring Festival. As the only "sub-supply" product in the Spring Festival, "Xiong Xin" not only stabilizes the basic disk of the younger audience, but also makes it suitable for young and old in content.

▲ Photo Source: the creation process of Xiong Xin and Xiong Xin goes through a special period of three years of epidemic. For many people, the concept of family has become closer and more important than ever before, and the explosion of family films has become the inevitable result of the recovery of the film and television industry.

In the production process, director Lin Yongchang hopes that the film can have a realistic color and entry point, more inclined to emotional display, to be closer to the real audience, closer to real life. " This year's theme is also more realistic, and the whole picture, including the content, will be more affectionate, "says Lin Yung-chang. The team wants to show that love can transcend race and national boundaries, so they want to make a different story.

This has to mention the second label of "accompany me Bear Core"-science fiction. "in recent years, domestic science and technology has developed rapidly in artificial intelligence, and the country is also advocating the rejuvenation of the country by science and technology. We want to incorporate artificial intelligence elements into the story and present a different bear mother to the audience. Use the form of artificial intelligence to make a package, using sci-fi imagination to appeal for realistic companionship."

It can be said that the main line of "Bear Core" is a science fiction story. However, it does not pursue more advanced scenes and thinking like wandering Earth 2, but uses science fiction elements to reflect the humanistic topic of affection. With the blessing of science fiction elements, the core of the story that love can span time and race can be more clearly displayed in front of the audience. Both the core and the narrative take into account the audience of different ages. Not only let the children be satisfied, but also the accompanying mothers and elders were happy, moved and cured.

Since the release of the Bear Bear in 2014, the big film Bear has been with audiences for nine years. During the Spring Festival for nine consecutive years, Bear has been with the children for the Lunar New year, making it the IP evergreen tree of Chinese movies.

In front of many large-scale films during the Spring Festival every year, the "Bear haunt" series has also made progress in a steady manner, gradually accumulating a stable output of word-of-mouth and box office, in exchange for praise from parents and children, and the cumulative box office of the past eight films has exceeded 4.2 billion yuan.

Lin Yongchang said that the big movie "Bear haunts" is mainly aimed at family audiences, but 20% of the audience is young people. Some fans of "Bear haunt" cartoons will come to the cinema to support "Bear Heart" when they grow up and even become parents.

Despite the basic IP and audience, "accompany me" Bear Core still needs to stand out in order to stand out. With the addition of family theme and sci-fi narrative, "Bear Heart" perfectly fills the niche of the 2023 Spring Festival Carnival film, showing a kind of warmth across age groups.

Conclusion from the box office results, "wandering the Earth 2" and "Manjianghong" two films take the lead in the Spring Festival, other films also have bright performance, forming a "two super multi-strong" situation. At the same time, the rise of the parent-child audience also reflects that the audience has basically returned to the state of watching movies before the epidemic, and the recovery of the domestic film industry has come.

Slowly Fangjun also hopes that this summary of the 2023 Spring Festival film will help ordinary audiences find the most suitable film for themselves, bid farewell to the New year and welcome the New year in audio-visual enjoyment.

Reference:

① Zhang Yimou: "Manjianghong" to build Chinese Romance-- Beiqing Network

② "Man Jiang Hong" must be popular-- thepaper.cn

③ has a good reputation at the box office. Why does "wandering Earth 2" stand out in the Spring Festival?-- Red Star News

④ reveals that "Bear comes and goes with me": more special effects, emotion closer to reality-- Beijing News

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:manfangsd, author: transition

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